We all know Captain Cook visited Hawaii in 1778 while voyaging north to look for the northwest passage and after returning a Tahitian to his homeland. That's the accepted start date of the opening of Hawaii. But do we have any other evidence to question that start date and/or suggest an earlier time-frame?
What I know of now includes:
The Lono figure, whose "kinolau" or body form looks remarkably like Western sails.
Accounts of Spanish or Dutch ships passing near or wrecking at Hawaii.
An apocryphal map of a Spanish ship capitain showing an archipelago about 400 miles north of Hawaii.
Pre-cook sweet potatoes, and pre-cook alcohol (okolehau).
Just curious. :) Thanks for any help you might be able to offer.
The Spanish Empire ran a trade route between Manila in the Philippines and Acapulco in Mexico that happened to pass the Hawaiian Islands both to the north and south (eastbound ships passing to the north, westbound ships passing to the south), and it's believed that at least one such Manila Galleon was wrecked on the west coast of Hawaiʻi Island. Oral lore describes a vessel named the Konaliloha that came ashore sometime during the 16th century, and the survivors of that wreck lived out their lives among the Hawaiian people.
There was also a Spanish navigator named Juan Gaetano who charted an archipelago he named "Islas de Mesa" in the Central Pacific in 1555, at about the same latitude as the Hawaiian Islands, but placed several hundreds of miles to the east. This was due to an inability to accurately determine their correct longitude, and the Spanish apparently never followed up on Gaetano's discovery. (James Cook had the advantage of working with early marine chronometers, which provided a means of readily and accurately calculating longitude when combined with celestial navigation. Gaetano only had dead reckoning available to him, which is subject to cumulative error and can be highly inaccurate after an extended time at sea.) The Spanish kept the "Islas de Mesa" on their navigational charts for over two centuries, until it was determined after Cook's landing that no such land existed at the location claimed on the charts.
While it's clear that there was some one-way contact with Westerners, it's not possible to determine what influence, if any, they may have had on Hawaiian culture prior to Cook's arrival.
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